After undertaking her undergraduate studies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at California Lutheran University, Kirsten initially joined KCL for an MSc in Drug Development Science. She has gone on to join the laboratory of Dr. Caroline Copeland in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences as a PhD student, where she has worked on interactions between licenced drugs and illicit drugs of addiction. While undertaking her PhD, Kirsten has also worked as a technician in the Cooke lab as part of a collaborative grant with Professor Rick Adams at University College London, on the contributions of NMDA receptors expressed in excitatory or inhibitory neurons to EEG biomarkers of psychosis.